Ukiah teachers request 10 percent raise

Dozens of teachers dressed in black packed Tuesday's meeting of the Ukiah Unified School District's board of directors to ask for higher salaries.

"I'm embarrassed to be here asking for money and I'm embarrassed for you," Ukiah High School English teacher Rosemary Eddy told the board. "It is humiliating to resort to begging again and again to receive equitable pay for our professional work. We all know the district can afford it."

Though enough teachers to fill the room's chairs and line the back walls attended the meeting to show their support, only Eddy and two other teachers addressed the board to ask for raises higher than what they were being offered.

"Two percent is not adequate compensation for the long drought," said Kimberly Scriven, who teaches sixth grade at Frank Zeek Elementary School. "Ten percent is not too much to ask for when we are already 14 percent behind. It is an insult to be offered 2 percent."

The district and the teachers' union, the UTA, are in the middle of negotiating new contracts, a process that board member Megan Van Sant described as "grueling," and both sides agreed needed to be improved.

"We look forward to having some sort of a different system so we can negotiate more quickly and with less acrimony," said UUSD board President Anne Molgaard. "It breaks my heart that negotiations can ever be interpreted to mean that we don't value teachers. Please know that it is not that we don't value you; you are the heart and soul of what we do here."

UUSD Superintendent Deb Kubin said last year's negotiations ended with the teachers receiving a 5.72 percent increase that was retroactive to July of 2012. This year, Kubin said the district offered them a 3.25 percent raise, and the teachers requested a 10-percent raise.

"We certainly all have a desire to make sure that our salaries are competitive with comparable districts so we can attract and retain qualified teachers, but we have to make sure that we're doing it in a fiscally responsible way," Kubin said. "I feel very confident that we can reach agreement over time; we just can't reach it right now."

Kubin said the district needs to plan its budgets three years out, and 3.25 percent "is what we think we can afford right now."

UTA President Leslie Barkley told the board the teachers had dressed in black for Tuesday's meeting because "we are in mourning," explaining that the faculty was mourning many things, including for colleagues they had seen leave for higher pay in other districts and for changes they have "patiently waited" for that have yet to happen.

"We truly believe that where there's a will, there's a way,'" Barkley said. "We need to feel understood and valued, and increasing our salaries is one outward sign of how much we are valued. We feel we are worth far more than what we are paid, and worth even as much as the salaries in the highest-paid district in the state. But we're not even going there -- we're only asking for what we know the district can afford."

The district and UTA will be back at the bargaining table Friday, and Saturday Kubin is scheduled to be in a dunk tank at a carnival being hosted at Frank Zeek Elementary School that begins at 11 a.m.

"So anyone who wants to get out some aggression can throw some balls and dunk me," Kubin said.

Justine Frederiksen can be reached at udjjf@ukiahdj.com, on Twitter @JustFrederiksen or at 468-3521.